


Born in the Caul

by apeirophobia



Series: Prince of Edirne [1]
Category: Dracula & Related Fandoms, Dracula Untold (2014)
Genre: Abandonment, F/M, Gen, Past Child Abuse, Political Hostages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-23 12:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2546960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apeirophobia/pseuds/apeirophobia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a name on your lips like the promise in your teeth and just like the scars on your back you got rid of him. </p><p>In the myth of his life Vlad is a loving husband, a wonderful father, and a terrible brother. </p><p>In which Radu the Handsome and Mehmed II are one and the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Born in the Caul

**Author's Note:**

> So, for anyone who doesn't know, the character of Mehmed II in the film is a composite character of Mehmed and Radu Bey (also known as Radu the Handsome), who was Vlad's real life little brother. Movie!Mehmed is pretty much Radu in action, motivation, and back-story, but Mehmed II in name, since Mehmed was a more notorious adversary of Vlad's. This fic is centered around the idea that movie!Mehmed actually IS Vlad's brother, and that he was a little upset at being left in Edirne, hence the events of the film.

The emissary he sends says,  _I demand 1,000 boys,_ and what he really means is  _give me your son_. He says  _give me your son_ and Vlad says  _take me instead_  and he wants to, more than anything, but he doesn't want Vlad's love at knife-point. The metaphorical sword to Vlad's throat grants Mehmed  _acknowledgment_  and he wants so much more. He wants to make him bleed, make him hurt, and he wants justice that he will never get. He doesn't say give me your innocence for mine, he says _give me Ingeras_ and Vlad is smart enough to know what this is about. He will destroy the illusion of peace that Vlad built at the expense of Radu's freedom. Vlad pleads as desperately as his honor will allow and Mehmed eyes him with dispassion. Vlad has integrity and fortitude but he lacks self-control ( _you should never show your weakness to those you've destroyed_ ). Mehmed has honor and cunning and nothing but time. Radu learned his lessons harder than Vlad did, but he learned them well.

 

(The emissary says _The King has need of 1,000 sovereign boys, including your son,_  and the King of Wallachia says,  _but I have two._ )

 

Fifteen is his father--the one who gave him up--dying and Sultan Murad saying _Wallachia is in need of a ruler_. Fifteen is Vlad mounting a horse and Radu saying "When can I come home?" and he's  _not_ crying because half-grown boys who've survived the barracks do not cry over the possibility of being separated from their only living family and. Fifteen is an ache in his wrist when his sword turns over and over, indentions from his armor leaving lasting welts on the underside of his ribs and scars pulled tight across his shoulder-blades when he shoots up in height (tall, but never as tall as his brother, his brother who he hasn't seen in six months, disappeared to a land he hasn't seen in eleven years). When _when_ is replaced with  _if_ and the hollow feeling inside Radu grows in the face of truth. The answer is Vlad met someone who makes him feel as if the past eleven years could just be a bad dream. The answer is Murad putting his hand on Radu's shoulder and calling him _son_. The answer is never.

 

They share blood, they've shed blood, and they've shed others' blood together. It's supposed to mean something (it was supposed to mean _everything_ ) but the cross-hatch marks across Vlad's back are now the only thing he and his brother share. And though Radu may no longer claim his name or his father or his country of birth, the grooves where a Pasha's whip caught on the hip-bone of his eleven-year-old self ensures that he never forgets what he is. Beneath the make-up and adornments of a Turk, beneath the title of Prince and the reverence of a Sultan's son he is just a stolen child. Scars wind around his wrists like jagged wire, and laced armlets hide where the skin was rubbed raw over and over again (until he was able to escape any bindings, no matter how tight). For every mistake, every fault of youth, there's a corresponding reminder in Radu's flesh. They call him a ward, but he understands enough of the world to know it's just a polite word for prisoner. And for every crumpled body on the battlefield and pair of sightless eyes beneath his horse there are five of his kind, the taken, the disposable children, in the ground. He supposes it should bother him more, but he traded sensitivity for survival.

 

Vlad sits peacefully, respectfully (so very unlike him) at the table and says 'let us be reasonable'. Vlad with his long hair and his stubble and his Wallachian robes and sometimes Mehmed doesn't recognize him at all. He wonders if Vlad can remember being eight years old and holding his hand through their first night in Edirne, or whether it's one of the memories he's tried to suppress out of existence, the way he's tried to suppress Vlad the Impaler. Vlad is wearing his ever-present ring, the one that proclaims him as king of this horrid, treasonous land, and he smiles at Radu with something like fear in his eyes.  _Boys grow up to be their own tormentors_ , Mehmed thinks, he is a Sultan and Vlad is their father. He wonders idly which of them Ingeras will grow up to hate more. Vlad says, _I am worth 1,000 boys and you know it_ , and Mehmed doesn't disagree, but he also doesn't back down. Vlad's hands curl into fists, and Radu's lips threaten to twitch into a smile at his brother's agitation. Vlad sees, misinterprets Radu's flash of sentiment for mocking, and becomes more incensed. Leaning over a map of Wallachia, now just another province to conquer, Mehmed signals for Vlad's dismissal and pretends he is not shaken. Pretends he is above being affected by the ghosts of his past. Vlad pauses at the entrance to his tent, lips pursed tight with words unspoken, and Mehmed wonders what Vlad sees when he looks at _him_. Wonders if he bares any resemblance to the boy Vlad left behind ten years ago. Vlad's breath catches in his throat, and it is an answer in its non-answer. Mehmed's eyes are lined in kohl and his hair is short and Vlad looks at him like he's already dead.

 

Vlad stops impaling people when he's twenty-two because his realm is coming into order and Ingeras is getting old enough to understand what it means when his father comes home drenched in red. And maybe he hates the screams, or maybe he likes them a little too much, but Vlad locks up the armor of his youth and swears _never again_. He stops writing to Radu two years later, whether due to guilt or due to disinterest Mehmed will never know (though he can hazard a guess), and Radu suspects Vlad wants to forget the part of his life he can't reconcile with his perfect little kingdom. Radu is not without his sympathies, sometimes he would like to forget himself too. Maybe Vlad didn't want to see a boy he once loved slowly turn into Mehmed, a son who would make a Sultan proud. (Either way) Mehmed blames Mirena's influence. She got the crown and the kingdom and the loving family and it's not jealousy, exactly, just fact: the life Vlad promised her was bought with Radu's soul. A life enslaved for a dream fulfilled and it's all very fair except for where it _isn't_ \--Mirena is beautiful, there's no denying that, and he's sure the person Vlad pretends to be deserves someone so lovely--and is he allowed to be resentful when he's been allowed nothing else?

 

("Let me come home," he pleads with a then-nineteen-year-old Vlad, newly crowned ruler of Wallachia, and when Vlad says, "We all have our duties," he sounds so much like father.)

 

Trust breaks, and innocence dies, on the oddest of moments. A letter sent, a baby born, and Radu is just-sixteen and all alone in a country that is not his own. A country he's lived in, and on the outside of, since he was four years old. Ingeras is named heir to the thrown of Wallachia and Radu weeps. Ingeras is named heir to the thrown of Wallachia and any hope Radu still harbored of returning home dies.

 

He is a skilled warrior, but he is not feared. His opponents kneel after he bests them in battle, his brother's opponents kneel when they hear his name. He leads his faction and his men trust him. He conquers whatever realm Murad II deems worthy of their occupation, and he always brings back more men than he set out with. He turns on the battlefield fluid, like a dance, steps he learned at Vlad's heels a decade before, as he parts another infidel's head from his shoulders. His wrist burns and his shoulders ache, but his hands do not shake, and he is fourteen years old, he is twelve years old, he is five years old and every body on the ground means one more reason he is alive. He strikes down enemy after enemy and their religion and their age and their culture matters not to him, because he is a warrior and he has one purpose. The battlefield is where he feels closest to Vlad. It is the place he feels closest to _being_ Vlad. He is twenty-one and the letters still do not come.

 

Mehmed the second, or at least, the boy who was _supposed_ to be Mehmed the second, was a stillborn. He was born small and sad and blue three years before Radu came into existence, seven years before Radu was brought to the lands he now calls home. Murad tells him of his first-born (but never truly born) son the day of Radu's conversion. It is customary for an Islamic convert to choose a name of faith for himself, and Murad tells Radu that he wants him to possess his would-be heir's title. It's the sign he's been waiting for since his father died: a sign that he belonged, a sign that he should live. Murad doesn't say, _make me proud_ , he says, "You bring him honor, to bear his name," and it's intent, it's purpose. It's all he's ever wanted. On his knees before the Sultan who destroyed his childhood, the man who calls him  _son_ , he finally knows peace.

 

Radu is Mehmed and Mehmed is Radu and his brother is dead. He died the moment he took the throne and condemned Mehmed to a lifetime at the Ottoman court (or perhaps he died when he was nine and forced to kill for the first time), but it is when Vlad steps into Mehmed's tent that he knows his brother is truly lost to the land of the living. Standing before him is not the man Mehmed once( _still_ ) loved, but an animal with a man's face, black veins and demonic-rage laced into a Prince's visage. Mehmed fears few things, but for the first and only time he fears his brother, instead of  _for_ him. He is smarter, but Vlad is stronger, and wile and strategy can only give him the upper hand for so long. Vlad was always the son of the Dragon, Radu was always a step behind. He looks at what they've amounted to, a demon and a Turk, and wonders if their father would be proud. Vlad's eyes flash with something inhuman and Mehmed thinks  _yes_ ( _yes_ _this is what any father should do_ ) and it feels like vindication. That Vlad should sell his soul for what he can't stand to lose (it's only fair since Radu's is already forfeit). Mehmed struggles under Vlad on the floor of his tent, trapped between his brother's hands and the wealth of an empire, and he is desperate. Desperate for escape, or victory, or concession, or for something he can not put into words, neither Romanian nor Turkish. Silence is a pleasure that can not be bought, no matter the amount of silver a man possesses, and it is a gift Vlad finally gives to Radu, with his mouth on his neck and a stake in his heart.

 

(Radu of the house Dracul is three years old when Murad II comes to his father's court for the first time. The Sultan and his father exchange words he doesn't understand and he presses into his brother's side, looking up at him in question. Vlad smiles at him, reassuringly, and says _everything is going to be fine_.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are love! Hope you enjoy <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Know the waters sweet but blood is thicker (and that much harder to erase)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2969366) by [SweetNightingale09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SweetNightingale09/pseuds/SweetNightingale09)




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